


always loved the strange birds

by anddirtyrain



Series: The modern AU files [2]
Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: Gen, kid!frary, probably the weirdest AU I have ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 17:46:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4189128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anddirtyrain/pseuds/anddirtyrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here's the thing about children, they don't overthink things. She realized he wasn't like her and that was it.<br/>Or,<br/>Mary was five years old when she spent the winter at her grandmother's house and everything changed. No one knows exactly what happened, and no one realizes maybe it was for the best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	always loved the strange birds

Mary really, absolutely, did not want to spend christmas at her grams’ house.

The house was big and old, with creaky floors; and it somehow always smelled funny, like burnt food and dust. Alas, Mary was five years old and did not have a say on where she was spending christmas.

The sun was shining bright when she got off the car, reflecting off the white snow beneath her feet. Her new dress stuck uncomfortably to her skin, and she scratched at her ankle, the frilly white fabric of her sock starting itch. Her mom had made her dress with her Sunday best.

Her grams always had a sneer on her face when she looked at her, or at least, that’s what it seemed like to Mary. She’d been told more than once that she looked just like her father, grams’ only son, and some days it felt like she had a giant arrow pointing at her all the time, singling her out because of a man she never knew. Just another reason why she didn’t want to spend the summer at the old house.

She had accepted her fate though, and was quietly trailing after her mother when her eyes wandered to the orchard next to her gram’s house, remaining stuck there.

“Mama, what’s that boy doing up there?” she asked, her eyes on the figure sitting on a low branch of Gram’s apple tree. The tree was bare and covered in snow, but still he was sitting there, very still, as if did not bother him at all.

Her mom squinted her eyes against the sun, but then shook her head and pulled Mary along to the house.

“There’s no one there, now come on.”

Mary tried to look back again, because it looked like a kid, just like her, but at her mother’s insistent pulling of her hand she gave up. She’d have plenty of time to explore later, it’s not like her grams would make her spend a lot of time with her. In fact, the opposite might be true.

It’s not that her grandma was mean. She was actually perfectly nice, but rather disliked children (Mary in particularly, or so it seemed) and she was also very strict. Mary learned at once that she was not allowed to go to the back of the property, because there was a lake there and the ice never got frozen enough for it to be safe to walk on, nor was she allowed to touch anything or run inside the house.

All too soon she was waving goodbye to her mom from inside the screen of the door, but her mom did not look back.

 

 

The days were long and boring. Her grams said TV’s did not exist when she was a child, and so no child needed them, meaning she did not have one and Mary was left with nothing to pass the time. Grams’ house was on the edge of the woods, and she did not have neighbors close by, not that it mattered. Mary was not allowed to talk to strangers, children or not. She might catch some disease, Grams said.

(Maybe that lack of excitement was to blame for what happened, but they’ll never know.)

It was a few days after her arrival, on an otherwise completely uneventful day, that she saw him again. She pulled her coat tigther against herself. She was wondering around the outside of the house, waiting for Grams to call her for dinner, and she’d almost ignored him. 

It was a boy about her own age, she supposed, maybe younger. He sat on the edge of the orchard, his head in his hands. It looked like he was crying.

“Hello?” she asked, tentatively.

All of a sudden his head snapped up, and he slowly turned to look at her. She was closer now, and realized he was blond and pale, and his eyes were very blue, almost like the lake at his back. He wasn’t crying but he looked very sad.

“Are you okay?” she asked and didn't think he was, he was wearing no coat and it was freezing. He looked as though he was going to answer her, but then Grams called her, sounding angry. She turned towards the house, deciding if she should run back or stay with the boy, but when she looked back at him he was gone.

She did not tell Grams about the sad little boy. She would have been angry, that Mary disobeyed her and spoke to a stranger; and she could have gotten him in trouble too, Grams always raged about the "nasty little boys" who came to bother her.

Mary ate her bland mashed potatoes and peas in silence that afternoon, thinking about him.

She did not sleep very well that night. She trashed and turned, the summer heat stifling, but something kept her from getting out from underneath the covers and opening the window. She felt someone would be looking up at her. Or something would scuffle underneath her bed.

But still, a curiosity bigger than herself pulled her to the orchard outside, to the bare trees and the lake, and especially to the sad little boy she’d seen once maybe twice, and had broken the monotony she found herself living in.

 

 

Her second week there found Mary getting out of the house more and more, as her grandmother took long naps in the afternoon and trusted her no to wander outside.

It was on one of these days, these secret missions she took care her grandmother wouldn't find out about, that she saw him again. The little boy, eyes just as sad as she remembered.

"Hi,” she told him quietly, for some reason feeling like she should be very careful with him. She did not want him to leave away so fast like the last time. His eyes snapped up at her, and she knew he'd heard her even when he was so far away. “Hey, are you okay?”

He simply nodded, and his curly hair bounced on top of his head in a way that made her giggle. He smiled.

 

 

She started spending time with him from then on. He would stand outside her window when he wanted her to come and play, and she'd sneak out when her grandma wasn't looking. He was quiet most of the time, but they would have races outside and you couldn't really talk anyways when you were running so it didn't matter. She learned to run faster, because he did not wait for her at all.

 

 

“How old are you?” she asked him one morning, as she plunged her hands in dirty snow and build them a castle. He didn't talk a lot, but when he did it was all about his half brother and his bow and arrow. She didn't know a lot about _him_. Not even his name.

“I don’t know,” he tells her quietly, shrugging his shoulders.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” she pushed, because her neighbor Aylee was two whole years younger than her, but even she knew to say how old she was with her fingers. Still, she kept quiet. Sometimes she got this feeling that if she knew too much about him she wouldn’t see him again.

 

 

She started calling him by his name a couple of days after that, even when she didn’t remember him ever telling her that it was Francis.

 

 

“I don’t wanna go to church,” she complained, as her grams walked around the house looking for her special umbrella. Church was hot inside, and boring, and her clothes always started to itch halfway through.

 

“Nonsense, its christmas' eve,” her grandmother said sternly, the thin line of her lips leaving no room for discussion. “Now, come on.”

But suddenly, Mary got an idea.

(A few minutes later Mary walked behind her grandmother, just a little bit angry at Francis for not accepting her invitation to come with her. Even though she supposes it’s not his fault they won’t let him in.)

 

 

“Do you remember?” he asked her that night, as he sat on the floor of her bedroom, after she left the window open for him to climb in.

“Remember what?”

“Before,” he told her, looking at her intently, like she should know what he was talking about. Like he wasn’t just being his weird self again and she’d forgotten something important.

She looked away when the back of her neck started to hurt.

 

 

They didn't scare her, the things she started noticing. When he ran back to his house, his feet didn’t seem touch the ground.

(Here's the thing about children, they don't overthink things. She realized he wasn't like her and that was it.)

 

 

When Mary turned five, her mother thought she was old enough to have something of her father's, and that's how she came to own the worn gold ring she carries around her neck. She searched all over the house for something to give Francis after he left, something good enough for her first real friend, but her grandma had nothing he would like, and the drawing she'd made him suddenly did not seem like enough. And so, the ring. She couldn't think of a more perfect gift. 

 

 

She didn't seem him on the morning, and though she was a bit sad because she couldn't wait to give him her present, she guessed he was with his family, and so she waited. She hopes he had a bebtter christmas morning than her.  Her only present today is an old bible from her grandma. It's not wrapped, and she missed her mother because even though she almost always got her gifts she didnt like, she always had them wrapped in bright colored paper and ribbons. Still, she thanked her for it, even hugging her briefly, and her grandmother seemed more surprised than anything else.  Mary just wants to see Francis.

The hours passed by painfully slow, and the ring she wrapped in bright, crayon-colored paper sits heavy underneath her pillow.

The call came at three that afternoon, her grandma yelling across the house for her to come and get the phone. When she did, it was her mother, wishing her a Merry Christmas and promising her a present when she picks her up the next day. All of the sudden, Mary could'nt breathe.

She returned  to her room in a daze, because up until now, she hadn't realized-hadn't thought at all, that she was going to leave. For the past couple of days she'd been  worried about getting Francis a present, and dusting snow of her coat and drying her socks so her grandma wouldn't realize how much time she spent outside-but she hadn't remembered that eventually her mom would be coming backf for her at all. She felt like crying, but the feel of eyes on her stopped  her. She looked  outside, and Francis wa s standing right there, but before she can tell him he took off running.

She hurried as well, running outside the house with no care for her grandmother still on the phone. The door slammed  on her way out. She could  see Francis off in the distance, still running away from her, and she ran faster , not even feeling the biting cold as it hit her bare arms, her coat having been  left inside.

He ran, to the part of the property where she wasn't supposed to go. She stopped herself for a second, then followed him blindly.

"Wait! Francis!" she gasped as he stopped, a few steps away from her.

"You're going to leave, aren't you?" he asked her, biting his lip like he was angry, even though he also looked like he was going to cry.

She nodded.

"My mom is coming back for me in the morning," she told him, and wiped her tears with the back of her hand.

"Don't leave," he begged her. "Please, Mary don't leave me." She only cried harder.

"I don't want to go," she told him, the cold air finally making her shiver. She thinks she can hear her grandma's screams in the distance.

He looks at her for a second, and the his eyes open wider, for the first time in a long while not looking so sad.

"You don't have to," he says. “Come with me, Mary,” his big blue eyes begged her.  And for the first time she looked around herself, at the clear glass that seemed to spread out beneath her feet. “And then we can play together forever.”

His voice was sohopeful, and she felt so sad. She looked at his hand, at the pale little fingers stretched for her to take.

“Mary, stop! The ice is too thin!” her grandma yelled, finally at the age of the lake where they stood.

But she was already too far in, the floor cracked beneath her feet. She looked back at her Grams, desperately waving at her to stop walking, screaming that she couldn't swim, and their neighbors were too far away, and the water was too cold. But she looked back at Francis, seeing the promise in his eyes that she would never feel lonely again. She took another step forward and made her choice.

 

A few years afterwards, Mrs. Stuart turned her big old house into a bed and breakfast. It was never as popular as the motels in town, especially when visitors heard of what happened. Stories formed around it. Some were far too outlandish and others simply did not make sense, but most people did agree on one thing.

During the night, especially in the winter, the noise of small footsteps running around the house could be heard, accompanied by children’s laughter.


End file.
